The underrated 1980 Rolling Stones song Ronnie Wood can’t live without: “It gets everyone dancing”
If you told Ronnie Wood in 1975, when he joined The Rolling Stones, that he’d still be rocking out with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards more than 50 years later, he’d have asked for a sip of whatever you were drinking.
While they were one of the world’s biggest bands, chaos was always lurking around the corner. By this stage, they’d already tragically lost Brian Jones, and his replacement, Mick Taylor, could only last a few years at the coalface of terror before calling it a day, leaving his bandmates in the lurch.
In addition to personal problems, Taylor had grown frustrated by his lack of writing credits, a key factor in his decision to leave The Rolling Stones. However, his primary issue was that the band was never truly his; it belonged to Richards, Jagger, Charlie Watts, and Bill Wyman. Therefore, it seemed like Wood would inevitably only last a similar timeframe, yet he did the unthinkable and made himself part of the furniture.
To make it work, Wood left his ego at the door upon joining The Rolling Stones. He knew that his job initially was to facilitate the brilliance of Jagger and Richards rather than battle with them for the limelight, which explains how he’s now the third-longest-serving member of the group.
Admittedly, Wood didn’t play on the recordings of classics like ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Gimme Shelter’ or ‘Sympathy for the Devil‘; nobody can question his credentials as a Rolling Stone.
Naturally, Wood took a bit of time to get his feet under the table, but by 1980, he was ready to become much more than a member of the supporting cast. During the recording process for Emotional Rescue, Wood was finally comfortable standing up for himself in the studio. He had a vision for ‘Dance (Pt. 1)’ that he wanted to execute, and compromising was no longer a contemplation for the guitarist.
For this sentimental reason, it’s Wood’s favourite track by The Rolling Stones. It’s one of their first songs that listed him as a writer and confirmed to the outside world that he wasn’t in the Stones as a session musician, but was a vital cog.
Wood once proudly said of the song’s creation: “I stuck up for myself, ’cause I picked a song that I wrote. I thought, ‘No one’s gonna mention that.’ But I think people, when they hear that song, they love it — because it’s really up, and it gets everyone dancing.”
The Rolling Stones guitarist then explained how the rest of the band “followed my lead” for the first, but not the last, time.
He continued: “I had the whole riff, and I had an instrumental in mind, just to get the groove and the funk going. And then Mick jumped over it and he just … we didn’t have to talk much. He more or less said, ‘Let me loose on this,’ you know? ‘And I’ll set it on fire.'”
On another occasion, Wood elaborated on the song’s genesis: “‘Dance Pt. 1’ was one strong riff where Mick immediately took the bait, literally got up and danced to it, which was the whole idea of the track: it’s a catchy riff.”
By this point, Wood had been in The Rolling Stones for five years, but had yet to have a defining moment before finally coming of age on ‘Dance Pt. 1’.
‘Dance Pt. 1′ was the opening page to his second chapter with The Stones, after spending five years duly obliging to his bandmates’ demands to fulfil their visions. While he had a star-studded CV, thanks to his work with Jeff Beck and the Small Faces, Wood still had to serve an apprenticeship with The Stones, but after ‘Dance Pt 1’, he was an irreplaceable part of the unit.
